Almost a year after the Capitol uprising that resulted in former President Donald Trump’s suspension from Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube, Big Tech was once again in the political crosshairs this week for cracking down on another Republican’s account.
One of Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s Twitter accounts was permanently banned on Sunday after several violations of Twitter’s Covid-19 disinformation policy. A tweet providing a graph that falsely claimed to indicate deaths tied to Covid-19 vaccinations, a number Greene said had been disregarded, was the final straw, according to a person involved with the decision.
Republicans have only intensified their accusations on Big Tech platforms as mustache-twirling partisan political manipulators since the insurgency. Republicans are ready to make Big Tech a primary ideological adversary in 2022, based on the pushback from Greene and her friends this week. Even as some have dubbed this year a “do or die” year for tech regulation, some politicians’ strident, almost gleeful attempts to caricature tech platforms risk jeopardising the effort and endangering those who would benefit most from tougher tech oversight — everyday users, including their own constituents who are bombarded daily with public health misinformation and conspiracy theories.
Following the ban, Greene called Twitter “an enemy of America” in a statement. Greene began fundraising immediately in response to the ban and hinted at “huge plans to fight back,” despite the fact that she presently serves on no congressional committees and spends the majority of her time, according to a CNN analysis, filing highly charged but dormant legislation. Greene also claimed that her Facebook account had been locked for 24 hours. (Meta, then known as Facebook, eventually admitted that one of Greene’s posts had been removed for breaking its regulations, but that suspending her account was “outside the scope of our policies.”) )
